If you want to achieve any sort of meaningful success in your life, you have no choice but to take ownership of everything your life contains.

If you don’t accept responsibility for every action, emotion, thought, and belief in your life, you will be susceptible to exactly the sort of change you are seeing right now – random events. There are excuses preventing you right now from being the best you, you can be.

Your thoughts need to be constructive, not destructive.

You are where you are in life because of the decisions your made in your life. Period.
Nobody has it easy.

Because when you take complete ownership of your past, you finally get to take ownership for your future.

We all want to control our own destiny, but so many of us believe fate has more control then we do. That’s just a lie… it’s the excuse we use to avoid the pains of personal responsibility for our current place in life.
It’s easier to feel better about yourself on a superficial level when we deny the realities of our own in-action or laziness. Do you feel good about intending to do something one day? How do you feel after you complete a meaningful task?

4 are birds on a sand bar in the ocean, 1 decides to fly away – how many remain?
Four. The bird only thought about flying. My question is this: What happened next? Was there a better way?

Every moment of every day, with every thought guiding each and every action, we’re slowly shuffling our future choices into bits of immutable history. The difference between drowning on a sinking raft and being waited-on in the perfect place just how you like, is simply a matter of choice – and the personal responsibility to take action on the choice.

The Past is the past, remember the lessons learned from it, but don’t let it drag down your future. Use it – Raise high by providing strength through knowledge and experience. Let The past go. While it may take time to see the effects, Change happens in a moment. Make that change now to choose a better future. Make now better.

Choose.

Willpower… the substance generally lacking within all people depressed or otherwise unhappy.

It’s not something that can be replace by some gimmick fast acting miracle sold on some infomercial at 2am or in the discount bin at your local Walmart. Thought simple minds hoping there is a solution without effort continue to line the coffers of 2-bit solicitors, it’s just not there. Feeding on a lack of will power to make a quick buck and knowing this audience is too lazy to complain that just got scammed, these sales continue to thrive. (play the lottery lately?)

What is Will Power?

Willpower is defined as the ability to exert one’s desires over one’s actions and manifests itself as determination, resolution and persistence. It’s the inner strength to make the decision, that takes the action, and embraces the inevitability of obstacles regardless of the of difficulties bound to appear.

Did I mention it’s fleeting?

When your poised to start a race and your there at the starting blocks, your pumped up and ready to give it – that’ your will power getting you start. It’s what will give you the power to go from a dead stop to full speed in the shortest span of time.

When you first have what you believe is a great idea, it feels easy to take actions that progress this thought into reality. But soon your original desire to produce the results will be fade. This is normal and needs to be anticipated for successful results.

Driving down the highway in first gear will surely blow your engine fast, but without first gear it’s difficult to start moving.

That initial effort will be the toughest, it will consume the most amount of energy, and will therefore will be unsustainable.  If you continue to consume that much energy you will burn out, fizzle up, and fall away. You need to strategically plan so that once you get moving, you can use the power of your will as momentum to continue that pace with less energy.

Plans are the nutrients of willpower.

It doesn’t take much to be effective, it can take a long to to create, and not very hard to get them together.
BUT
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

If that angers you, just ask yourself what do you wish did better. Then ask yourself how well you planned before you took action.

When you truly want to achieve something you need to look beyond the tasks at hand and see the overall bigger picture, and value the end result more then you dislike the obstacles between your current position and the target goal. Then, with that full image in your mind you need to find what will have the greatest impact with the smallest amount of effort.

Some Examples to get you started.

If you want to lose weigh, remove the junk food from the house and replace it healthier snacks you can still enjoy. If you say there are no snacks you can enjoy, research some online. Print out healthier recipes and place them in the kitchen.

If you want to exercise more, move your couch and put a StairMaster or even just a floor mat in your favorite viewing location, and break your remote control. Or better yet, give away the TV and go for a walk. Watch the neighbors and listen to nature.

If you want to spend more time with the family, plan activities around time that you usually waste (like watching T.V.)

If you want to earn more money, buy some educational material and place some in the bathroom, some in the bedroom. Learn to enjoy reading – plan on it. Get some mp3 and load up your iPod, you can listen to them while going for that walk to lose weight.

Whatever you want to accomplish, use your will power to alter the environment that is creating the problem. Then live within the new environment with the expectation to accomplish the goal you set forth.